|
|  |
|
|
|
| |
| May 06, 2005 2:24 am |
|
re: re: re: re: re: Building *The* Indian Knowledge Economy Brand |
Bala Pillai
| |
From: act-km@yahoogroups.com [mailto:act-km@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Bala Pillai
Sent: Friday, 6 May 2005 12:09 PM
To: act-km@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [act-km] Re: What is knowledge?
Dear all,
And here's The Pioneer, a newspaper in India chiming in:-
Cheers../bala
"As for knowledge management, its theorists talk about a continuum that
has data at one end and knowledge at the other, with information in
between. In fact, this continuum is often illustrated as a mountain
with data at the base and knowledge at the top. The whole idea is to
show two things: One, in any system data is enormous while knowledge is
limited. Two, knowledge is a far more evolutionary form of the same
thing of which data is the most elemental. Knowledge Management theory
defines data as a piece of fact. When lots of data is distilled, it
results in information. When someone takes in information, processes it
in his mind, and thereby creates a state in which that person is
equipped to take some action, it becomes knowledge"
The Pioneer, New Delhi, India
06 May 2005
Let's begin with self-knowledge
Prodyut Bora
Sometime back, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while inaugurating the
Infosys Leadership Institute at Mysore, announced the establishment of
a Knowledge Commission "in the next few weeks" to "exploit the latent
potential of our knowledge network and leverage it to make India truly
the "knowledge engine" of the world" and thus make the country "the
natural choice for all knowledge-based activity."
Shortly thereafter, in his speech to a joint sitting of Parliament
before the start of the Budget session, President APJ Abdul Kalam
dwelled on the objectives of the proposed Knowledge Commission:
"Increasing access to knowledge for public benefit, nurturing knowledge
concepts in universities, knowledge creation in science and technology
laboratories, promoting application of knowledge in our business and
industry and using knowledge to improve service delivery in
Government."
The Finance Minister in his Budget speech said, "The National
Commission on Farmers has recommended the establishment of Rural
Knowledge Centres all over the country using modern information and
communication technology (ICT). Their goal is to set up a Knowledge
Centre in every village by the 60th anniversary of Independence Day."
While the Government has let out very little information on what
exactly would this Knowledge Commission do; and, what would its
structure be and other details, I would like to draw the attention of
the readers to a couple of more fundamental issues: That of our reading
habits and the state of our libraries. The basic question is, without
developing the reading habit, without promoting original thinking, can
we become a knowledge economy on the strength of networking some
universities and laboratories alone?
While it is difficult to estimate the size of the active reading
public, statistics on the publishing industry could be a good proxy.
But sadly in India even that is hard to come by. Publishing in the
country, save for some big guns in the metros, remains by far a cottage
industry. Even the Government and its agencies are clueless about how
many books are published in the country.
The point here is not to debate about numbers. Even without the use of
statistics, it is evident that reading is not a favourable pastime
among Indians. And if not for textbooks, curriculum-mandated books and
reference titles, the number of books "consumed" by a country of a
billion people remain embarrassingly negligible. So who do you blame?
The Government, the media, the education system or the public? Well,
everybody and nobody.
Does our current school education system aim at instilling love for
reading? Do our literature, language, history and social study
curricula require an average school student to explore the world of
ideas beyond what is stated in the text books and "guide" books? Why
blame the school curricula? Even the National Policy on Education does
not mention anything on reading (for widening one's knowledge, as
opposed to literacy acquisition). Then, take the media. Do we have
anything that resembles The Times Literary Supplement or the New York
Review of Books? Why was it that a dedicated book review supplement
from one of India's highest circulated English language newspapers was
allowed to die after just one issue?
Then, most public libraries in the country are poorly resourced -
understocked, understaffed, and underskilled. The first problem is
their catalogue: Under the pressure of reducing Government-budgetary
support, most of them have either stopped requisitioning new titles
altogether or do so only intermittently. The second problem is
staffing: While the world has moved away from the concept of library as
a stockpoint of books to a disseminator of knowledge, where library
staff actively helps their members in the process of knowledge
retrieval, how many of our staff in our public libraries are skilled
enough to assist anyone in the knowledge gathering process?
Lately, the Prime Minister has also expressed a desire to make Shanghai
out of Mumbai. The Finance Minister has gone one step ahead and
expressed an intent to create seven mega cities, and even provided an
outlay of Rs 5500 crore for their development. But what should be our
model for development - Shanghai with its Bund, Oriental Pearl Tower,
Pudong Business District, Maglev Train; or New York with its New York
Public Library, Museum of Modem Art, Central Park and Broadway, in
addition to the Manhattan Business District? My point is simple: Urban
renewal should go beyond conventional infrastructure to include
amenities for people's intellectual development.
As for knowledge management, its theorists talk about a continuum that
has data at one end and knowledge at the other, with information in
between. In fact, this continuum is often illustrated as a mountain
with data at the base and knowledge at the top. The whole idea is to
show two things: One, in any system data is enormous while knowledge is
limited. Two, knowledge is a far more evolutionary form of the same
thing of which data is the most elemental. Knowledge Management theory
defines data as a piece of fact. When lots of data is distilled, it
results in information. When someone takes in information, processes it
in his mind, and thereby creates a state in which that person is
equipped to take some action, it becomes knowledge.
While IT can be used effectively for data management, it cannot be
applied very well in knowledge management without certain enabling
factors. In an organisational context, those enabling factors are: One,
a desire on the part of members to learn and two, a desire to share. In
the context of a nation, those enabling factors would be a culture that
encourages reading, thinking and writing. Many organisations that have
initiated knowledge management have failed mainly on one count: They
emphasised the technology factor over the human variables.
If we intend to be a knowledge economy, we cannot do it through IT
alone. For that, we need to make a larger section of Indians into
knowledge practitioners - people that actively engage in the knowledge
acquisition, knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination processes.
And IT is peripheral to these processes. They require one to go back to
the basics: Reading, thinking and writing.
© CMYK Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
cheers../bala
Bala Pillai bala@apic.net
Knowledge Economy Brands-in-the-making (since 1995) Knowledge Management +
Social Networks + Citizen Journalism + Complementary Currency See
http://www.malaysia.net/bala-interview http://www.ryze.com/go/bala
http://www.malaysia.net http://www.tamil.net http://www.singapore.net
http://www.indonesia.net http://www.teleindia.com
Some people make the world happen, more watch the world happen, most wonder
what happened.
Private Reply to Bala Pillai (new win) |
|
| |
|
